Customers come and go from the Sports Authority flagship ‘Sports Castle’ at 1000 Broadway in Denver on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Sports Authority has abandoned hope of reorganizing and exiting bankruptcy and instead will count on buyers to save parts of its sprawling retail chain, company lawyer Robert Klyman told a judge Tuesday. (Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post)

Native Roots’ made a splashy April Fools’ Day play: display and leaderboard ads plastered all over DenverPost.com, a press release, an interview with CBS4, a call to The Cannabist’s Ricardo Baca, and a mock-up of a huge green marijuana leaf hanging below Bucky the Bronco on the side of Mile High Stadium.

On a day when one can’t believe much of anything on the Internet, the Denver-based marijuana dispensary bragged it had started the process to acquire the Mile High Stadium naming rights from current holder Sports Authority, which is wading through Chapter 11. At Native Roots at Mile High Stadium, the company would “explore the potential of offering joints and vaporizers to patrons over 21.”

“It makes for a great April Fools’ laugh, but if we could get this done, we’d do it in a heartbeat,” Jordan said in an interview with Baca.

If Native Roots’ high hopes do extend beyond April Fools’ Day, it’s probably a pipe dream.

The NFL could not be reached on Friday for comment, but the league is not too keen on marijuana, which still is illegal under federal law. Also, state law places limits on outdoor advertising for recreational marijuana businesses and bars the consumption of marijuana in public.

And, significantly, officials for both the Denver Broncos and Sports Authority said Friday that Native Roots’ public proclamation was the first they’d heard of the company’s stadium-naming aspirations.

To reiterate an old axiom used often at Balance Sheet HQ: Skiing is only expensive for poor planners.

If you don’t want to pay close to $200 for a lift ticket for the 2016-17 season, plan ahead and act now, a full eight to nine months before the season begins.

The spring pass deals have sprung and it’s an all-out blitz by the resort world to make a dent in the gold standard of season passes: Vail Resorts’ incredibly popular Epic Pass.

The largest resort operator in North America last week announced a $10 price increase for its Epic Pass, which now costs $809 and delivers unrestricted access to Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, Arapahoe Basin, Park City in Utah, California’s Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood, Australia’s Perisher and three urban Midwest ski areas. The company, in a second-year of the free-candy-for-kids strategy that has helped grow its season-pass dominance, is offering free skiing for Colorado’s elementary school students with its Epic SchoolKids pass. Epic SchoolKids provides four free days at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone.

Vail Resorts sells more than 350,000 Epic Passes every year, an amount that likely exceeds the cumulative total of all other season passes sold in North America. The rest of the resort industry is escalating its season-pass game, largely with deals that unite partners in an organized effort to combat the Epic Pass.

Within days of announcing the Epic Pass pricing, the deals from Vail Resorts competitors started flowing. A mingling of several private and public resort operators slashed the 2015 price of their M.A.X. Pass by $100 for 2016-17, offering five days at each of 25 ski resorts across North America for $599.

Winter Park and Copper Mountain are teaming up again, offering a free kid pass with the purchase of an adult pass. That deal is good for the $499 Rocky Mountain Super Pass +, which offers unlimited skiing at Winter Park, Copper Mountain and Eldora plus six days at Steamboat and three days at Crested Butte, as well as the $399 Winter Park- or Copper Mountain-only pass. (Math: A family of four skis all season for $798 to $998.)

The 2016-17 Mountain Collective Pass also included a kids’ pass deal, with $1 children passes with the purchase of a $379 adult pass. The Mountain Collective provides two days at 12 resorts, including Idaho’s Sun Valley, Utah’s Alta / Snowbird, Mammoth, Aspen / Snowmass, Jackson Hole, Taos and Squaw Valley / Alpine Meadows.

The first dominoes are starting to fall from Sports Authority’s entrance into bankruptcy.

At one end, sporting goods giant Dick’s Sporting Goods is licking its chops and drafting plans to capitalize on Sports Authority’s closing stores. At the other, key vendors are prepping their financials in light of the fifth-largest sporting goods retailer filing for Chapter 11.

Dick’s CEO Ed Stack said Tuesday, following the release of tepid fourth-quarter results, said that his firm would look to pick up market share in the areas where Sports Authority is closing stores. Additionally, Dick’s would consider purchasing some of those closing stores’ leases.

Store manager Andrew Swenson puts out more hats at the SportsAuthority Sporting Goods store at the downtown Denver Sportscastle, which opened at 6am on Monday, Feb. 8, 2016 to sell Denver Broncos Super Bowl Champions gear. (Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon/ The Denver Post)

The former CEO of Boulder Brands has launched a company that he describes as a “private, virtual Boulder Brands” and announced Boulder-based Pact, a sustainable apparel company, as the firm’s first investment.

Steve Hughes, former CEO of Boulder Brands and co-founder of Sunrise Strategic Partners

Steve Hughes, a natural foods industry veteran who was ousted last year from his CEO post at the now-acquired Boulder Brands, has ventured into the equity capital and accelerator realm — an area that he said is a better fit for him in creating “long-term value without short-term disruptions.”

Here’s what we know for certain: Sports Authority officials are in restructuring discussions with lenders and the company has targeted about 140 of its 450-plus stores for closure, a source close to the situation told The Denver Post. There is no timeline for when — or if — a filing would be made, the source said. UPDATE: Moody’s Investors Service on Tuesday downgraded Sports Authority probability of default rating to Ca-PD/LD from Caa3-PD and its corporate family rating to Ca from Caa3. Moody’s views the missed payment Read more…

A slackline highline demo takes place over Vail Village’s Gore Creek during the SUP Cross race thrills crowds at the 2015 GoPro Mountain Games last month. (Provided by Zach Mahone, Vail Valley Foundation)

GoPro is returning as title sponsor of Vail’s GoPro Mountain Games this summer.

The mountain sports festival — June 9-12 — is expanding for its 15th year in Vail, kicking off the Vail Valley’s summer season with paddling, climbing, biking, running, fishing and slacklining contests.

WhiteWave Foods, the Denver-based company behind such brands as Horizon Organic, Silk and So Delicious, this week pledged to have 100 percent of its sourced cocoa powder be independently certified by the end of the year.

Providing the certification is UTZ, an Amsterdam-based organization that works with the likes of Mars, Nestle and Heinz. UTZ’s code of conduct for cocoa producers includes requirements such as the number of shade trees, that beans are dried in a manner to prevent contamination and that the beans meet quality standards. Read more…

Emilie Rusch covers retail and commercial real estate for The Post. A Wisconsin native and Mizzou graduate, she moved to Colorado in 2012. Before that, she worked at a small daily newspaper in South Dakota. It's the one with Mount Rushmore.